Chapter 139: The Right Path

After discussing the hive-shaped magic network model and promising a “reward,” High Lord Gawain didn’t let Rebecca and Jenny leave right away. Instead, he pulled out some blueprints he had been sketching over the past few days, along with his own summaries and calculations on “rune logic” based on his understanding.

Rebecca’s attention was immediately drawn to Gawain’s drawings, while Jenny’s eyes widened in surprise as she glanced over the formulas he had worked out. “You did all these calculations yourself?”

“I just tinkered with the materials you gave me when I had some free time, trying to piece together rune sequences,” Gawain smiled and nodded. “I do have some foundation in magical theory.”

“This… this isn’t just about having a foundation,” Jenny said incredulously, staring at his work. “These calculation methods and even the way you write them—have you ever encountered this kind of thing before?”

“During the era of the Gondor Empire, there were quite a few achievements in mathematics—though rune logic never really developed,” Gawain replied casually, though only he knew the truth: he had never studied rune logic before, but the mathematical mindset he’d accumulated in his previous life remained intact. Even if the formulas themselves weren’t directly transferable, the logic and approach to calculation still worked. So far, the rune logic formulas Jenny had compiled were still fairly simple, and understanding the calculations derived from empirical formulas was no challenge for Gawain.

Seeing Jenny was about to ask more questions, Gawain quickly steered the conversation forward. “Let’s take a look at these next.”

“This is the ‘second-generation mana engine’ you mentioned last time—the rotor-type engine or something like that…” Rebecca flipped through the blueprints. “I’ve never seen this before… And this magic circle model looks like it’s fire-based?”

“It’s a Scorching Ray array, a level-two spell that releases a focused beam of intense heat from the circle’s focal point,” Gawain explained. “Though honestly, it’s just a low-level spell—one tier below a fireball. You’ve never seen it?”

“Nope,” Rebecca shook her head vigorously. “Aunt Hetty taught me the Scorching Ray spell model back in the day. She said it shared origins with Fireball, so maybe I could learn it—but trying to learn that spell gave me a headache. I ended up with a mental block, and when it came to learning how to convert the spell model into a magic circle, I kept falling asleep in class…”

Gawain was dumbfounded by this frank confession from his N+1 great-granddaughter.

Scorching Ray wasn’t some advanced spell. To Gawain, the flashy beam of heat was impressive visually, but it was only a level-two spell—just one step above a level-one small fireball. Rebecca, on the other hand, was a “level-three mage” who could force herself to cast a large fireball through sheer mental strength. By all rights, Scorching Ray should have been a breeze for her. But in this world’s supernatural realm, innate talent for casting was predetermined. For mages who relied on personal aptitude, if they were born with a casting flaw, no amount of effort could fix it.

Sometimes, trying too hard just gave you a headache.

That said, it’s worth noting that although Rebecca only officially knew one spell—the Fireball—she could technically claim to know two. A small fireball and a large fireball are essentially the same spell model, just scaled differently: the small one is level one, the large one level three. The latter requires more mana and stronger mental control. Rebecca’s innate limitation meant she could only record one spell model, and that happened to be Fireball. So saying she knew two spells wasn’t exactly wrong…

Gawain often thought that if she kept going down this talent path, someday she might accidentally discover nuclear fusion.

“What exactly do you want me to look at, ancestor?” Rebecca asked, having finished reviewing the blueprints, her curiosity piqued. “Are you planning to build this rotor-type mana engine again?”

“When making complex mana machinery or advanced magical devices, the biggest problem we face is ‘interference,’” Gawain said, sharing a thought he’d been pondering lately. “During the operation of magic circles, the energy flow between runes causes interference. Two adjacent magic circles interfere with each other. Advanced magical devices have complex arrays with many rune nodes, so interference is even worse. This is the main reason why advanced magical devices have low production yields and high prices. Traditional mages have never been able to fully solve this problem, and it’s the biggest obstacle preventing supernatural items from becoming widespread.”

Jenny looked at Gawain’s formulas and suddenly seemed to understand, her expression thoughtful.

Gawain continued, “We already discussed the rotor engine last time. Its only problem is interference—too many repulsion arrays arranged symmetrically, making interference unavoidable. So we had to put it aside for now. But this Scorching Ray array…”

“Shouldn’t the Scorching Ray array have no interference issues?” Rebecca said uncertainly. “I don’t know how to cast it, but I know it’s a mature technology. Many mages like to set up these traps in their towers—it’s powerful and more precise than fireballs, which can damage everything around. It can take out intruders without collateral damage…”

Gawain waved his hand. “That’s right, the Scorching Ray array has been used before. But traditional mages ‘solve’ the interference problem by engraving it on expensive mana-conductive substrates. I want to draw it on cheap red copper plates, using even cheaper materials like quartz sand and bloodwood resin for the runes—that’s where the interference problem comes back.”

Jenny guessed Gawain’s meaning. “You want to reduce the cost—but engraving the array on low-quality mana-conductive materials means each rune’s energy level is suppressed, lowering effective power. To keep the array functional, you have to increase the number of runes, and traditional mages believe that more runes mean more interference.”

“Exactly,” Gawain said calmly. “Engraving or drawing arrays on low-grade substrates or using inferior materials for runes reduces their ‘effective output.’ So you have to add more runes to maintain the array’s original effect. But more runes increase the chance of interference causing the array to collapse. Traditional mages solve this by engraving arrays on expensive, high-grade materials, achieving the effect with the simplest array structure. They’re used to avoiding interference this way because they have the money.”

Rebecca said, “But ancestor, you’ve been trying so hard to make supernatural items… what’s the phrase again?”

Gawain gave her an approving look. “Affordable mass production.”

He went on, “All problems boil down to the unique ‘interference’ property of magic. Interference in arrays is the biggest hurdle to affordable mass production. It drives up the cost of many low-level magical devices and prevents many of my designs from working. But now… we have a way to solve interference.”

“The key is using rune logic to calculate!” Jenny was captivated. She had studied rune patterns for years, but only to design arrays and complete her mentor’s assignments. This was the first time she truly grasped the higher-level value of these mathematical tools. “Traditional mages think that more runes cause interference and collapse, but from the formulas, we can see that more runes don’t cause interference. In fact, more runes give the array stronger anti-interference ability. The real cause of interference is the ‘interference knots’ formed by runes arranged in certain patterns. Because interference knots cause interference to rise exponentially—far outpacing the anti-interference effect of adding runes—people have long believed that more runes make arrays unstable…”

Gawain laughed, genuinely delighted. “Exactly! With rune logic, we don’t have to grope around in the dark like traditional mages, relying on luck and unreliable experience to design arrays. Take the rotor mana engine I designed before—we can fine-tune the rune arrangements in each repulsion array, even redesign the repulsion arrays themselves to reduce interference knots. Using the same method, we can engrave or draw arrays that used to require expensive mana-conductive materials onto cheap red copper plates, making them affordable for everyone!”

“Affordable for everyone…” Jenny was clearly stunned by the idea. “Is that even possible?”

Gawain asked back, “Why not? Even the brickmakers and miners in the territory are using mana engines now. Aren’t mana engines essentially magical devices?”

Jenny was speechless.

“So, you want us to calculate these things next?” Rebecca looked at the blueprints Gawain had laid out, her face lighting up with excitement. “Ah, I see you even marked the price ranges for the substrate and rune materials next to each array… You want to make these arrays work on such cheap materials? Sounds challenging!”

“Confident?” Gawain smiled.

Rebecca puffed out her chest. “Absolutely!”

Jenny smiled shyly but determined. “I’ll do my best. I won’t let you down.”

The two girls left with a pile of new blueprints and materials, while Gawain leaned back in his chair, letting his thoughts drift.

He thought to himself: he had finally found the right path—one that could bring ordinary people into the mysterious realm.

He had grasped the way to unleash magic’s greatest potential in this world.

Magic’s nature of “thought made real” was the greatest advantage for turning his wild ideas into reality quickly!

In a world without magic, turning a concept into reality might take years, decades, or generations, with most time spent on painstaking tool production and improvement. But in a world with magic, this process is drastically shortened. Almost all the time cost happens between the mind and paper. As long as a mage calculates fast and accurately, the moment they complete a spell model, their magic becomes a “thing” that can manifest in reality. Even if the magic belongs only to them for now, its “real-world significance” is already achieved.

All Gawain had to do was turn these spells one by one into mana engines, scorching ray guns, crystal bombs, hive magic networks…

(End of chapter)